Quote from: The Return of the Black Company, p 650"Only a very great evil could remain so single of purpose, so uncaring of cost, as to create something so ultimately useless."

P.S. I realized this while watching a little video about alchemy in Noita, basically a super subtle subsystem that seems almost irrelevant to playing the actual game: certain liquids interact to turn into other liquids. It looks exactly like 'powder game' did way back in the day, that ancient simulated-pixels toy. It made me realize that even though in the final game it seems very unimportant, you can still see the tracks of the design inspiration. Noita wasn't made in a day... it was a powder game clone that slowly grew in natural ways, day after day, month after month, until arriving at where it is now. It evolved.

A prototype, a playable, a sim... whatever you call it, it's a compelling little seed from which a million games might flourish. This is what I mean when I say it's more. It's not a game; it's the birthplace of an infinite number of them.

This is a thing I could play forever. I'm not sure what to call one of these "somethings I could play forever", but the word prototype comes to mind. Dungeon Bounce is another one of these things: an infinite, eternal playable. It stands on its own and I'm loathe to call it a prototype as in not-a-whole-game but it's true that it's not a whole game.

It's more.

I started to build a little minimal Probability 0 clone in Godot, and though I always describe Probability 0 as a game about navigating and not taking fall damage -- I will insist to anyone that the fall damage is central, essential, crucial to its design -- still it's taken me this much time to realize what that really means.

Probability 0 started as this prototype which you can see recreated below in Godot: it is a platformer with a floaty jump, a down-scrolling camera that applies pressure, an utterly random field of tiles either solid or not. Nothing more.

I've wanted to port or remake Probability 0 for a while, but the task seemed daunting, impossible. How could any one person make so many individual elements? I have some recent experience with developing a game one tiny piece at a time:

31 unmarked games was made in 31 pieces across 31 days, a month-long 31-game jam of sorts. In that project, though, the lines of development are extremely clear, perhaps even uninspiringly so. It doesn't feel like an impossible artifact with all its layers stored inside and beneath each other -- 31 unmarked games feels like thirty-one separate things, glued together. This is by design.

When I think back to Probability 0, I think of the entire game. It has three game-modes, fifteen enemies organized into three tiers (easy, hard, and secret enemies which only appear after 1000km or something), stars, punches, hitboxes, a skill tree (pictured below), four or five boss-type enemies, a menu, and more.

PROC 0 - RANDOM WALK

I spent a few hours browsing Pinterest and gluing together a bunch of pins into something, but it never coalesced into a whole-ass form. (I won't link the board here.) Of course I added things I liked and I removed things I disliked but this is no procedure; this is a random walk. It's not going to take me anywhere at all.

PROC 1 - FIND SOMEONE ELSE'S INSPO BOARD

Based on How to Use Pinterest Effectively,

1. Think of something that inspires you. Can be an adjective, a character, a celebrity, a colour scheme, a specific piece of clothing.

2. Search for the seed term, something that appeals to you. (* Get in touch with your sense of taste. You don't need to be able to describe what appeals to you so long as you feel it and trust in the feeling.)

3. Find a board that's well-executed.

4+. Repeat, following pins to find more boards. Get a lot of boards. These are resources.

As far as I can tell this advice revolves around finding boards! That's cool.

references:

How to Use Pinterest Effectively

Wardrobe Overhaul

I need a procedure!

"Trends are super pervasive and affect a lot more than you think"

there is no wardrobe philosophy or shopping methodology that is ever going to result in an end state whereupon you are done choosing and purchasing clothes forever. -from a ffa reddit post

Haha, "There is watching pleasure algorithms to be found at work"

I suppose this is just another way of saying that it feels good to watch events occur, right? "Things change." The world goes on by. But I like the words algorithm, and system. They feel a little more bounded, more evocative. An algorithm is going somewhere. A system is something.

A process feels like something I can design, for a purpose.